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A miracle: Pets swim to safety after SUV plunges 70 feet off bridge

Lucky the dog is recovering at an animal shelter and Stevie the cat will have emergency surgery after a vehicle falls approximately 70 feet off a railroad bridge into the water in Pittsburgh

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Updated: 10:21 AM EDT May 22, 2017

A miracle: Pets swim to safety after SUV plunges 70 feet off bridge

Lucky the dog is recovering at an animal shelter and Stevie the cat will have emergency surgery after a vehicle falls approximately 70 feet off a railroad bridge into the water in Pittsburgh

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Updated: 10:21 AM EDT May 22, 2017

A miracle: Pets swim to safety after SUV plunges 70 feet off bridge

Lucky the dog is recovering at an animal shelter and Stevie the cat will have emergency surgery after a vehicle falls approximately 70 feet off a railroad bridge into the water in Pittsburgh

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Updated: 10:21 AM EDT May 22, 2017

PITTSBURGH —

While the woman from an SUV that plunged 70 feet into the Ohio River from a railroad bridge was found dead, a little dog that was also in the vehicle survived and was found hours later, along on shore of Brunots Island. NRC plant manager Kevin Panzino who heard the dog barking as he left work.

"We don't even really understand how it could have survived. I mean it's 70 feet from the trestle to the water," Panzino told Pittsburgh's Action News 4. "This guy's a tank. It's unbelievable. He's chillin'."

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The gentle little dog survived the SUV's impact, managed to reach the water's surface and the swim to shore, an estimated distance of 100 yards.

Panzino found the dog hours after the woman's body was recovered after the vehicle plunged from the railroad bridge into the Ohio River.

"Sure enough, I could hear him down there, barking. The bank was very, very steep and very thick with brush. He couldn't make it up on his own. I was able to see him, tried calling him, he wouldn't come up," Panzino said.

The dog waited as Panzino slid down the river bank from the plant lot and rescued him.

"I picked him up and he was calm, just like this. (I) managed to make it up the bank -- barely -- and took him back into the power plant in the control room, where we kind of cleaned him up a little bit. He was still wet. Smelled like wet dog," Panzino said.

They're calling the little dog "lucky." It spent the night as a guest in the power plant control room, chowing down on turkey cold cuts.

"All the operators love him. He was getting along with everyone all night, wandering around. It was almost like he figured out his way around the plant already in a short time. Very pleasant little guy," Panzino said.

A doctor at Humane Animal Rescue found no major injuries during an examination of the the dog.

"All in all, it looks like he handled his adventures well," said Dr. Donna Hughes. "Dogs, they live in the moment, so they want to survive. They want to persist. And they do whatever they need to do to survive. And that's what he did."

If no family of the woman who died claims him, Lucky will have a new home.

"Yeah one of or operators has dibs on him. And I think in the next 10 minutes, two or three other guys tried to claim it but one gentleman was first," Panzino said.

A cat also escaped from the car -- but with injuries-- and is now at the PVSEC emergency clinic. It was found swimming in the river near the crash site.

"She has a wound in her chest from the fall and they're going to do surgery today and hopefully she'll recover from that," Dan Rossi, CEO of Humane Animal Rescue, told Pittsburgh's Action News 4. "The cat's stable now. When it came in it was in hypothermia from being in the water and had very low blood pressure. It looked it had some sort of head injury and it had a wound in its chest rom the accident as well."

The veterinary expenses for the cat alone had already reached several thousand dollars, Rossi said.

Panzino said NRG Energy was going to cover the expenses for both the dog and the cat.

Meanwhile, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office has not yet released an identification of the victim. Pittsburgh Public safety is not commenting on the police investigation and cannot yet say when authorities will be able to retrieve the SUV from under up to 20 feet of water.